


we go together (or we don’t go down at all)

by hegelsholiday



Category: Dreamcatcher (Korea Band)
Genre: Arson, Dubious Morality, F/F, Questionable Life Decisions, Serial Killers, a half-assed town of salem au, vaguely dystopic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-21
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:21:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22827853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hegelsholiday/pseuds/hegelsholiday
Summary: When they finally moved in together, the first thing Minji did was arrange her house slippers in a row against the wall. They were the fuzzy kind too--bright pink ones with little cartoon tigers--and Siyeon had difficulty reconciling with what she knew about what Minji did until she thought of everything else about Minji and it made a little more sense.Minji spoke in absolutes--us and them, but Siyeon wondered if they were so different after all, politicians and criminals, arsonists and artists, killers and cops. On the same and opposite sides of the law. She wondered if the executioners who condemned the innocent also slipped off stately leather shoes for worn-out house slippers, if they too, looked in the mirror and dreamed of their victims.
Relationships: Kim Minji | JiU/Lee Siyeon
Comments: 8
Kudos: 51





	we go together (or we don’t go down at all)

On Wednesdays Siyeon comes home late at night, singed matchsticks shoved quietly in the back of her pockets. It’s a shame too, because Siyeon rather likes these pants, and she’s sick of having to discard clothes with burned holes and scorch marks on them. 

The work is getting exhausting, but the adrenaline rush of the flames boiling underneath her skin is still worth every last shred of effort. In the hallway with the lights half on, Minji accosts her in the shadowed areas, kissing her as she leans dangerously over the shoe rack, only halfway through taking her shoes off. 

“Missed you,” she says. 

“I was only out for a few hours,” Siyeon says, but she’s smiling so wide that it feels out of place to even point that out. She pushes Minji off her lightly so she can finally take off her street shoes, wandering over to the kitchen sink. The ash always washes away quickly, dry and brittle under running water. Siyeon never thinks it’s quite right, but no sooner than she’s finished is Minji’s head falling on her shoulder, her arms wrapping around Siyeon’s waist. She leans over to Siyeon’s ear, breath quick with anticipation. Subconsciously, Siyeon finds herself doing the same. 

“We’re out of eggs.” 

\---

Under the cover of night, Seoul is alive. 

The city isn’t quite home--Siyeon isn’t sure what is--but after years of slinking through back alleyways and vibrant supermarkets it might as well be. The lights are always brighter than they have any right to be, but it’s another thing Siyeon has grown used to enough to ignore. 

Every night in Seoul is a game--a game of give and take, risk and reward. Every move she makes has to be planned out--push too hard, take too much, and the entire carefully built facade crumbles. There are eyes in so many places, and word on the streets travels fast to all the wrong ears these days. Siyeon has learned all the best hiding places and the quickest ways through crumbling back alleys through too many narrow scrapes.

It’s one of these nights where the kerosene is sloshed thick over her hands when she hears the sirens and she thinks _shit_ , because this wasn’t what was supposed to happen--the police weren’t supposed to be there until the flames climbed high enough to be visible, and by that time she’d be long gone. 

She curses out loud, by that time the sirens have gotten loud enough that she can maybe see the red glare in the distance, and it’s far, far too late to finish what she’d planned to do that evening. With one last reluctant look, she shoves the can of kerosene back into her pants and slips out of the hollow graffiti-littered door of the empty building she’d planned to burn. 

They aren’t there for her. Siyeon knows that much. But she’s familiar enough with the rest of Seoul’s unwanted outcasts to know that none of them can be considered allies on face value, so she goes home under the purple light shadows of the search lights. At home she shuts the door quietly and slides the can of kerosene into the bottom shelf behind the ugly red ceramic plates Siyeon has never had the occasion to use. 

In the morning, Minji is up already, a pair of reading glasses sliding down her nose as she skims the morning paper. Siyeon’s never gotten exactly why she bothers with reading careful cut-and-paste government-filtered garbage, but Minji seems to find some morbid humor in it. 

“Arsonist in town,” she says, when she looks up. 

“Oh,” Siyeon says. “Hope they catch them soon.” 

Minji hums in response, folding the newspaper over as she smiles over at Siyeon. “Considering the rumors that a rogue vigilante happened to shoot one of their most consistently accurate psychics, I’m assuming they have bigger problems.”

“It’s the government,” she says, brushing the hair out of her tired eyes. “Every problem they have is big.” 

Minji laughs, and when she gets up to leave for work, Siyeon chances a glance at the discarded paper. _Suspected Serial Killer Claims New Victim in Jongno District_ is sketched out in solid black letters. 

It’s the fifth time this month Seoul’s latest serial killer has made front page headlines. Siyeon thinks they must be getting desperate. 

\---

The arsonist thinks they ought to stop meeting like this. 

“I suppose it wouldn’t trouble you too much to get out of my way?” 

“I don’t know,” that damned serial killer says. She’s wearing some poor imitation of a child’s cheap glitter carnival mask, but every smug line of her body is still startlingly recognizable. Or maybe the arsonist’s just gotten better at reading between those lines. “I enjoy these conversations very much. Really lightens the lonely nights up.” 

“Hah,” she says. “You know it’s possible to talk to me without also ruining my night, right?” The other woman, sliding what looks like a very unsanitized knife into her pockets. The arsonist wrinkles her nose.

In the distance, a police dog barks mournfully, louder than the urgent shouts and calls for backup surrounding it. The decrepitly ornate facade of the courthouses, despite her best efforts and intentions, is still standing, no thanks to the woman in front of her. 

“I got here first,” she says, shrugging. “You should try being faster sometimes.” 

Siyeon huffs. “Fine.” 

“In my defense, I meant to save you the building, but I accidentally tripped several alarms on my way out.” 

“How sweet of you.” She dabs absently at the blood running down the serial killer’s cheek. There are always cameras, always eyes, even (especially) in dark places. Paranoia is simply necessary precaution, and with Seoul’s favorite serial killer claiming a sixth victim, it’s all the more pressing. 

“I thought so as well,” Minji smirks. “I pride myself on being a considerate individual.” 

Despite herself, Siyeon laughs, whether at the irony at that statement or their entire situation. “Race you back home,” she says, and Minji takes her hand and runs, seemingly uncaring of the thick adhesive of gasoline painting her fingertips.

(When she goes home she wipes it from her brow with shaking hands, wrings out the sweat in her hair. No matter how hard she scrubs she can still taste it, spread across her lips, and she wonders if Minji can too.) 

\---

Siyeon doesn’t really think of herself as an arsonist per se, just like how she imagines Minji doesn’t think of herself strictly as a serial killer. 

In another world, Siyeon might’ve been one of those street artists, hands full of paint spray cans instead of kerosene, spreading subversive masterpieces across the same subtle institutions of surveillance and fear. But what’s fire but a more destructive medium, the kind of performance art that burns your breath away, devours and consumes everything it can touch?

In another world, Siyeon could’ve kept herself away from too-worldly temptations. Worked a nine to five job and been happy simply because she was not aware of her own unhappiness. 

In another world, Siyeon would never have met Minji. 

\--- 

Minji likes to say that they bring out the best of each other, but Siyeon hears _best_ and thinks _worst_ , thinks of times when they’ve gotten drunk and reckless together and very nearly got _caught_. 

There’s something about Minji that draws the dangerous thrill-seeking part of Siyeon in, the part where they wander through the streets at night singing old trot ballads to each other, like there’s no one but themselves and the waning moon as a silent witness. 

“You’re just like me,” Minji had said once, arm wrapped squarely around her shoulders as they swayed slightly in the cold. Siyeon wasn’t even sure if she was that drunk, or if it was merely the giddiness of euphoria that came with not looking over her shoulder every five seconds. 

“I’m nothing like you,” she’d said, and it was true. There was beauty in fire, a kind of living, all-consuming art that leaps up at her fingertips. It was the kind of statement nobody could ignore. Inescapable. Ever-present. Everything she’d seen about Minji’s work up until then had been messy and animalistic and unrefined, a child scattering wooden toys on the stairs as petty revenge--painful yes, but ultimately forgettable. “I’m better.” 

Minji had laughed at that, and Siyeon had laughed with her, although she was unsure what exactly they were laughing at. 

“Well, nobody could ever have faulted you for not staying true to yourself.” 

Minji is always most beautiful when she laughs. If Siyeon squints hard enough she can almost see the flames licking their way up the ends of Minji’s hair, a greedy, destructive halo. 

If she squints, they look like stars. 

\---

They’re too young and somehow too old at the same time. Minji started at twenty-one. Siyeon started at nineteen. 

“How do you cope with the guilt?” she says one day. They’re comfortable enough with each other now that Siyeon feels willing to discuss their choice of career. It’s a few days before New Years. Nothing to do but press their faces to the windowpanes and watch the cold crawl up their noses. 

“Am I supposed to feel guilty?” Minji murmurs back. 

“Fair,” she says. “Your first one?” 

“Some sheriff.” Minji exhales. “Best friend got mixed up with the local mob. They didn’t care how or when, and well. You know the legal codes for these things as well as I do.” 

“Everybody gets mixed up with the mob at some point,” Siyeon says. She doesn’t mean them to be words of comfort, but Minji nods anyway. 

“And you?” 

Siyeon pauses. “Doctor,” she says. “I didn’t mean it.” 

She hadn’t. Didn’t mean it hadn’t happened. 

“None of us ever _mean_ it at first,” Minji says fervently. “Doesn’t mean we’re not freaks all the same.” 

A few days later, Siyeon helps Minji unpack the rest of her things from the boxes in the corner.

(When they finally moved in together, the first thing Minji did was arrange her house slippers in a row against the wall. They were the fuzzy kind too--bright pink ones with little cartoon tigers--and Siyeon had difficulty reconciling with what she knew about what Minji did until she thought of everything else about Minji and it made a little more sense.

Minji spoke in absolutes-- _us_ and _them_ , but Siyeon wondered if they were so different after all, politicians and criminals, arsonists and artists, killers and cops. On the same and opposite sides of the law. She wondered if the executioners who condemned the innocent also slipped off stately leather shoes for worn-out house slippers, if they too, looked in the mirror and dreamed of their victims. 

“It’s a matter of convenience,” Minji had said. “They don’t care about murder when they’re the ones doing it.”) 

\---

The papers have started calling them a public safety epidemic. 

Between the quiet worry slid underneath typecast font of official ration cut announcements and rumors of Seoul’s underground stirring again, the little corner of the newspaper the two of them are given seems almost insignificant. Like worrying about fleas when there are far more important and rational things to be concerned about. 

Minji laughs every time she sees it. “We’re getting to them. You see that? They’re afraid.” 

_They’re not afraid_ she wants to say. _It’s all a distraction._ She wants so badly to believe it isn’t. 

Siyeon will not admit it, but she is afraid. It’s not even the ever-present fear of getting caught. She can deal with that--the kind of fear that runs on adrenaline. It’s the slow crawling fear, the kind of thought that eats her up at night, as she wonders what the _point_ of doing anything (running) is. 

But Siyeon smiles too as she skims the headlines. Back page. There’s a quick, bullet-pointed list. Signs of criminal behavior in adolescents. Nothing that all good students hadn’t already drilled into their memories. 

(Certain individuals were more predisposed to crime than others, of course. Those were the citizens who had to be re-educated. Evaluated. Kept under constant surveillance. _It’s all in the blood_. Siyeon’s family were all good, upstanding citizens who had never had any predisposition towards arson. 

Siyeon read the history textbooks too, in backlit classrooms. As a child, the same singed matches she carried now had seemed almost powerful. Like something whole regimes could be made or broken on.) 

The frontpage story is about some well-respected lawyer turning up dead outside his home. _All sources suggest he was a likely mafia associate_ the paper writes. _Don’t trust anyone. Report all suspicious activity to authorities immediately. Curfews at sundown will be enforced strictly._ The same as always. It didn’t matter if it was her or Minji or the local mob; there were two things you could rely on in day to day life to be consistent: the criminals and the executions. 

\---

Minji says it out loud one day while she’s crowding over their cramped bathroom sink, scratching off the remains of a late afternoon nap and fussing over the toothbrush she’d just knocked over. 

“We’ll win,” Minji says, “when we’re the last ones in Seoul standing.” 

“This isn’t a game,” Siyeon says. She leans over, flicking a dry fleck of blood off Minji’s shoulder. “And you should clean up better.” 

“It is if you make it one,” Minji says, catching her hand as she makes to pull away. Siyeon wrinkles her nose, but Minji runs her lips across it in that same awkwardly charming manner that Siyeon can’t help but find herself more than begrudgingly tolerating. 

“What’s the point?” 

“What’s the point of playing cops and robbers with law enforcement all day? There is none if you don’t make one yourself.”

Siyeon snorts, pulling her hand away. She wonders, only briefly, if Minji is serious. “Once you start you can’t stop,” she says instead. “You spend years laying low, hiding yourself, even if it was only once. Records don’t get erased just because you’ve felt remorse, or because it was an accident. They’ve executed people for less.” 

“Exactly. It’s more proactive this way. Preventative action.” Minji’s smiling suddenly like it’s all one big joke, and it is, isn’t it? “Come for them before they come for us.” 

“You can’t kill everyone in Seoul,” Siyeon says lightly. _We_ can’t. 

“Wouldn’t it be nice though?” 

Maybe. But Siyeon is not angry, simply one single activist in a sea of conformity. There is no realistic end in sight for people like them. 

She thinks that’s the end of that, but then Minji holds out her hand, and even though Siyeon knows that it’s outstretched and open, she looks for the catch, looks for the knife that isn’t there before she takes it. 

“Let’s win this one together,” she says, and Siyeon nods and shakes her hand, like it’s a formal, binding agreement.

 _Together,_ Siyeon thinks, and wonders why that sounds so damn nice. 

\---

_“It’s lonely out there,” the serial killer said to the arsonist. “You’ll need friends eventually.”_

_“Go away,” said the arsonist, barely blinking. It was becoming increasingly hard to deny that their paths crossing at night was anything of a coincidence, but if it came down to it, she was confident enough in her ability to survive a one on one confrontation. “You’re ruining my show.”_

_“What show?” the serial killer said. As if the glorious blaze in front of them was anything but hard to miss. “All I see is the one in front of me.”_

_“Charming,” the arsonist said. “Still don’t care.”_

\---

“Do you ever think about what you might be doing if you weren’t here?” 

_All the time._ “I don’t know,” Siyeon says, a little distracted. She checks the overlay of the church again, making sure she’s made the most effective arrangements. Finding them sound, she turns towards an unexpectedly solemn Minji and thinks. First, she tries to imagine living without the constant fear that the sirens in the street are coming for her in particular. But it’s when Siyeon thinks about not coming home to Minji’s hands over hers, where Minji’s collectible knick-knacks don’t litter the floor and make her trip in the middle of the night on the way to the bathroom, that she finds she can’t. 

“I don’t know,” she says again. “Probably unhappy.” A whispered invocation, and the church of good order goes up in flames. It’s not even much of a church at this point, but Siyeon has enough quiet humor in her to oblige with the label. Poor imitations of stained glass windows, peeling paint. She wonders if they’ll start moving public executions outdoors again. The thought makes her sick. “God rest our souls.” 

“God shouldn’t have made us this way then,” Minji says, just as flippantly. 

“Nobody _made_ us the way we are. We just were.” More than anything, Siyeon’s choices are her own. She isn’t looking for some higher power to dismiss the way Siyeon has dictated her own actions, to pass it off as some grand martyred struggle. They have chosen to be criminals, and now they lie in beds of their own making. 

“Nobody?” Minji says, and Siyeon recalls suddenly that Minji had an aunt taken away long ago. An aunt and a cousin. She squeezes the other woman’s shoulder briefly. 

“Nobody is born evil,” she says. 

Minji has to leave for work early next morning, but she leaves the latest issue of the paper on the table. The latest headline is has been circled in thin red sharpie by Minji’s own hand, an angry English teacher’s comments on an eighth grade report. Next to it is a small smiley face. The ink is still fresh enough that Siyeon can smell the scent of faint permanent marker. 

The words the reporter uses are large and unwieldy and, in her opinion, inaccurate; “explosion,” “blown up,” “an act of domestic terror,” but the picture the photographer captured of the half-ruined church is in sharp focus. Almost artistic, Siyeon will admit, in the way it effectively reflects the destructive beauty of it all. She’s sure they didn’t mean it though. 

It’s hard to think of herself as any sort of terrorist. Next to a city-fortress of CCTV cameras, it’s hard to think of herself as doing anything worthy of notice, even if it’s all Siyeon has ever wished since she started considering arson a proper recreational activity. 

\---

_“Even you admit I’m charming,” said the serial killer. “Shouldn’t that count for something?”_

_“Sure,” the arsonist said, shrugging. “If you want to pretend that it does.”_

\---

The latest fresh-faced investigator shows up to their door just as the water in Minji’s pot boils over. His gleaming, standard issue badge is the first thing Siyeon notices about him when she opens the door. 

“Is there a Kim Minji living here?” Something in her goes cold. 

“That’s me,” Minji says from behind her. Her fingers twitch. Siyeon thinks about how quick Minji is with a knife, and wonders if she could use it. If it would work. Of course it wouldn’t.

“I’d like to speak to you about recent events around here,” the police investigator says, and it’s like he’s already reading the charges, the search and arrest warrants, the sentencing. “I’m sure you’re aware of recent public disturbances in the city?” 

_Who isn’t?_ Siyeon wants to say, but she holds her tongue. Minji smiles disarmingly. 

“Of course,” she says. “What can I do to help, investigator?

 _You’re just like me,_ Minji had said, what felt like half a lifetime ago, windblown hair half in her face. But as Siyeon watches her answer the investigator’s questions with ease, sees her smile softly and nod in sympathy, and thinks back to her response then. Thinks that calling themselves two sides of the same coin might be a vast oversimplification as she registers Minji inviting the man (intruder) to sit down, hears her laugh good-naturedly. 

It turns out that their guy is a complete rookie, and Minji wins him over easily. By the time he gets to the door, Siyeon is almost relaxed, the three of them cracking jokes together like old friends. 

Siyeon keeps a small vial of kerosene in her back pocket for emergencies only, but today they will not have to use it. 

“They’ll probably be back around,” Siyeon says after he leaves. She resists the urge to do something impulsive and uncriminal-like, like hug Minji and kiss her breathless for being so stupidly charming with strangers sometimes. 

“I don’t have anything on my record. Officially.” And she should probably be thinking that a blank record wouldn’t matter, just like a perfectly clean family tree and no history of felony convictions, but Siyeon is too relieved to even try to finish that thought. 

“Neither do I.” 

_We‘d make such a good team_ , Siyeon thinks as they share a grin. Wistful, almost. Both of them know that this can’t last forever, and whatever Minji likes to say two anonymous felons can’t take down an entire regime together. 

But for now both of them are alive and free. Maybe that’s enough for her to stop worrying. 

\---

_“You think I need friends like you?” Siyeon said._

_Minji smiled, sharp and wicked. “Yes.”_

**Author's Note:**

> be gay and do crimes now with more morally dubious descriptions of crime as art i guess
> 
> title borrowed from all time low - love like war


End file.
